Patterns of accounting history literature: Movements at the beginning of the 21st century

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Accounting Historians Journal
Vol. 37, No. 2
December 2010
pp. 123-144
Juan Baños-Sánchez Matamoros
UNIVERSIDAD PABLO DE OLAVIDE
and
Fernando Gutiérrez-Hidalgo
UNIVERSIDAD PABLO DE OLAVIDE
PATTERNS OF ACCOUNTING HISTORY LITERATURE: MOVEMENTS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Abstract: This paper addresses and updates the challenge made by Carmona [2004] regarding the need to broaden the accounting his­tory literature into periods, settings, and sectors outside those tradi­tionally published in specialist journals. For this purpose, we review three international journals – the Accounting Historians Journal; Ac­counting, Business & Financial History; and Accounting History – and two national publications – Rivista di Contabilita e Cultura Aziendali (Italy) and De Computis (Spain) – over the period 2000-2008. The re­sults show changes in the publishing patterns of accounting his­tory ­research. We also explore whether non-Anglo-Saxon researchers have widened the settings, periods, and sectors studied from those of ­Anglo-Saxon researchers, thus altering the traditional focus of ­accounting history research.
INTRODUCTION
Accounting history is currently a dynamic area in account­ing research, especially since the early 1990s [Fleischman and Radcliffe, 2005]. In particular, Carmona and Zan [2002, p. 291] considered the 1990s “a golden age” of accounting history re­search [see also, Fleischman and Radcliffe, 2005]. This improve­ment came about because of the contributions of accounting history congresses and publications, as well as the efforts of leading accounting history journals, particularly the Accounting Historians Journal (AHJ), Accounting History (AH), and Account­ing, Business & Financial History (ABFH) [Carmona and Zan, 2002]. Carnegie and Potter [2000] and Anderson [2002] have also remarked on developments in this area.
In spite of this improvement, most of the literature has been by Anglo-Saxon authors devoted to Anglo-Saxon settings, centered primarily on the 19th and 20th centuries and on pri­vate organizations. Scholars from other communities, such as